


The Bird And The Spider

by thecattydddy



Category: Avengers Assemble (Cartoon), Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Ultimate Spider-Man (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Clint Barton Feels, Defenders - Freeform, Doomverse, Gen, Uncle Ben dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-30 23:56:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6447274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecattydddy/pseuds/thecattydddy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint Barton reflects on his relationship with Peter and worries over just how young the webslinger is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bird And The Spider

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I know that Sam is technically supposed to be 17 in the show, but the livestream of Avengers Assembled I was hosting yesterday all agreed that was bullshit, so it was ignored. There's just too many problems with that and I'd much rather believe that Sam is a full grown man who's still such a mama's boy than that his mom had to "give parent's permission" for him to join SHIELD. All in all, though, that doesn't have much relevance to the story besides, like, one paragraph, so hopefully you still will read this.

Clint had known the Parkers. Good people. Smart and tactical. They’d been polite to him for the most part. Their encounters had been limited, even within SHIELD's inner workings, but somehow he knew that Richard watched reruns of old Star Trek episodes on Fridays and Mary made these peanut butter cookies to die for. He also knew they had a son, though Clint had never had the fortune of knowing the boy’s name. He did know that the kid’s first word had been _Spoon_ and that he’d get absurdly happy whenever he saw a picture of Captain America. Weirdly enough, Clint had always been very good at getting people to talk to him on missions, which usually was something he hated and, at the time, he had despised just as much, but he was grateful for the couple of hours he’d spent with the Parkers. He was _glad_ that he had gotten to know them and their son before it’d been to late. Not _just_ the Parkers, of course – All of SHIELD was gone, now. Those who hadn’t betrayed them already long dead. Clint had only these small memories to remind him of who’d been lost – but _especially_ them. Especially when he looked at this kid who had since joined his team of Defenders.

Sam was young, sure, but only in the way a man in his mid-twenty is young to a man in his late thirties. A couple years that barely meant anything in these days. Sometimes, when things weren’t at their worst, Clint would joke around by calling him kid or Sam would mention something about Clint not being as spry as he used to be, but it was nothing more than that. Their age differences meant nothing, especially in the heat of the moment.

Peter was different.

Peter, before Clint had ever even bothered to ask his age, had been young. He wasn’t just a few years like Sam, either. Peter was still a _kid_. Clint might have put him in high school, if high school had still been a thing that existed. Education had never really been one of Doom’s many promises. Still, despite this, Peter was a genius. He could work the insides of something better than most men twice his age and what he didn’t already know he taught himself. The kid learned best when he could take things apart, work with his hands and all that, but whenever Clint managed to locate an old textbook or a couple of important documents from an old research lab in some of the more run down parts of the city – A term used relatively. The whole world had become a little rundown since Doom had taken over – he would hand them off to Peter who would poor over them endlessly. Peter rarely smiled, but he also rarely got presents, so Clint sometimes went out of his way to find one. It wasn’t healthy for someone so young to be so cynical and depressed all the time.

Maybe that was just memories of the past talking, though. The life that had been around before Doom’s take over was not the reality they knew today. Peter was old enough to remember it, but for someone with only sixteen years to his name, it didn’t influence him the way it did Clint or Sam. The dark reality was a lot more ingrained. Even if, in some impossible reality, they could have brought down Doom and started building up that old world, Peter would never be able to really get past this. There would still always be a part of him just a little bit broken, a little bit haunted by Doom.

“Barton.” A voice broke into his thoughts, drawing his attention to the kid as he did so. Peter was making a face in his direction, eating a street hotdog that’d been warmed up by being nuked in whatever thing resembling of a microwave they had left. There were abandoned carts all over the place and, so long as you didn’t mind fighting the rats for them, they were alright. Peter even happened to like them, though Barton thought that was more puberty just not giving a shit so long as it was edible. Personally, he’d kill for a jar of pickles right about now, but it wasn’t like three of the world’s top criminals could just walk into a supermarket and breaking into a storehouse was too risky just for a couple of luxuries.

Pickles. A _luxury_. Clint could almost laugh if he wasn’t so miserable about it.

“What’s the matter, Pete?” he replied, pulling his bow into his lap to look it over. It was in as good a condition as it could be, of course – Better than it should have been, even. Sam always insisted on checking it after every mission and Peter killed a lot of his downtime inventing new and interesting technology with the scraps left over from the wreckage of the tri-carrier.

“You’re making that stupid face, again. The one you make when you’re getting sad about me. Stop it.”

“Yeah? Maybe I’ll stop when you quit being a little shit.”

Peter just simply pointed at Clint. “I learned from the best.”

“Yeah. And you’ve still got a long way to go, Kid.”

He rolled his eyes and went back to his food, bored already of the archer’s banter. Either that or he knew he was losing. Clint could never tell which one it was. “Whatever you say, Master Jedi.”

“Wow, _Star Wars_ reference? You’re such a nerd.”

“You’re just jealous because I’m Luke Skywalker and you’re a green gremlin.”

“A green gremlin who could still kick your ass, Parker.” From somewhere else, Sam called for Peter and the kid excused himself, leaving his hot dog unattended. Clint stole it from his plate, not wanting to let it go to waste. Well, actually, he just was hungry and it would piss off the kid, but no, it was _totally_ because wasting food was bad.

As weird as the analogy was and despite his ease at making fun of his supposed mentor, Clint knew Peter did look up to him. Not surprising, given the fact the kid had literally _no one_ else to look up to. His parents had been wiped out when he was still only three or four. He’d gone to live with his aunt and uncle after that, but Ben and May Parker had been killed in a protest during the early stages of the Doom’s rein, leaving Peter orphaned, yet again. Osborn and his son – Who’d once been a very close friend of Peter’s – had already targets on Doom’s list. Scientists and inventors he’d been interested in were wiped off the map or had joined with the man. Peter’s options were kind of dwindling down. By the time Clint came diving headfirst into his life, his role in the kid’s story was pretty much gonna be guaranteed.

Unsurprisingly, Clint remembered that event pretty clearly, too. Peter had been already making a name for himself before they’d teamed up, using things he found in his own backyard to construct some weapons. They were crude and no where near the kind of technology Peter has developed in the protective sanctuary of the tri-carrier, but they were impressive, none the less. Even then, he hadn’t expected the kid to be as young as he was. Seven of Doom’s robot lackies being pummeled into the ground later and Clint had offered Peter a home. A place to stay. This kid running around in the streets of a destroyed New York was no way for anyone to live. Sam had insisted it was reckless and that they didn’t even _know_ Peter, but it’d worked out for them in the end, right? Besides, Clint had a good sense for people and he knew an enemy from a friend. Peter was definitely not someone he’d want for the former.

In fact, despite of all this damage and destruction, somehow this kid had risen out of it and he was probably one of the brightest things left in Clint’s life. The three of them, they were the last shred of hope, not for the world, but for _him_. Sam and Peter… They were like family and there was a distinct lack of that in Clint’s life these days. It was something to keep fighting for, something to keep hoping that maybe their crude weapons and good intentions actually stand a chance against Doom. The thought that maybe someday Peter could put that brain of his to use in a nice college or that Sam could have some white picket fence life with a family was what pushed him through all this. God knows he wasn’t doing it for himself. As a former circus freak, SHIELD had already been his second chance. He wasn’t cut out for college or suburban homes, but his team could still have that. There was still a little hope for them.

“Are you still reminiscing in there, old man?” Peter poked his head back into the room for a moment. “If not we could use some hel- Hey! Did you eat my hotdog?”

“What hotdog?” Clint returned, packing up his bow, standing and heading towards the room Peter had just emerged from. The kid just stood there in exasperation.

“I was gonna eat that!”

“Yeah, but you didn’t.”

“If I did this to you, you’d probably kick me into next Tuesday!”

“I’m not really worried about you doing the same.”

“You suck, Barton!”

Clint ruffled Peter’s hair as he passed, only adding insult to injury, a slight hint of a smirk on his lips. “Yeah. You too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I think this is the purest thing that's come out of the livestream from yesterday. Unfortunately, there is a little bit of sin that managed to weave itself into this thing, too. There was a lot of Hawkeye appreciation going on because we're all trash like that. Vintage Lilac or bust.


End file.
